God shows us greatest love

February 11, 2010

By Joan Clayton: PNT columnist

Valentine’s Day comes once a year, but I know someone who sends love every day. His Valentine contains comfort, confidence, counsel, protection, favor, abundance, healing, wisdom, knowledge and much more. His Valentine is filled with love for you, and that love goes beyond anything this world could ever offer.

His love holds this world together. It’s the reason to get up in the morning. It’s the reason to go on living after a loss. Love gives hope to life. As long as there are people, there’s a reason to live and to love … “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3 NIV).

Love heals the deepest hurts and brings peace in the midst of chaos. Love is the bridge over troubled waters. Love makes life precious.

Take away love, and you have taken away life.

I love the Scripture in Song of Solomon 8:6-7. It is a reminder of intense love: “Place me as a seal over your heart, like a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death; its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away” (NIV).

Love is spending time in a loved one’s presence. I love it when my husband whispers, “When I’m away from you, you are all I think about.” That’s how God’s love is. He even “joys over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

Many love stories in the Bible thrill me. Jacob loved Rachel so much he worked 14 years for her hand.

Joseph was put into a pit and sold as a slave by his brothers because of their jealousy. Yet his love and forgiveness won out. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (NIV).

What about Queen Esther? She was the only one who could save her people. She bravely said, “I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).

Who of us can fathom the love of Ruth for Naomi, her mother-in-law?

“Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, there will I die, and there will I be buried: The LORD do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me” (Ruth 1:16-17).

Remember that first love, the excitement, the tingling, the burst of fireworks that made every day Valentine’s Day and Fourth of July? Just being in your sweetheart’s presence was everything. When you were apart, remember the anticipation of being together again?

That is how God sees you. He wants to live with you forever. He is your “Sweetheart!”

Open his Valentine. It is for you, and you don’t have to wait until Valentine’s Day.

Love is the greatest gift, and it is priceless. It cannot be bought, nor can it be earned. It is a precious gift from the One who loves you the most.

The greatest love mankind has ever known went to Calvary for you and me. That is love in its highest degree. Who of us would not lay down our life for our children or spouse, but for someone who wasn’t even a friend? Yet God spared not His only Son for you and me.

He is love, and his love letter to you is the Bible. Read your love letter today. It is the “Valentine” of all time, and it is written in red!